Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost

[Luke]

Yes...as Stravinsky (Saruman?) said, Webern was always a-chiselling away in his diamond mines, or words to that effect...

[Luke]

Combination of too much time on my hands + foolish whimsy:

[karlhenning]

: )

[Luke]

See, it would work...

[Luke]

Thought it would make a nice moody desktop - what do you think?   

[karlhenning]

I like it . . . but I can already hear what certain officemates would remark on seeing it as a desktop!

[Guido]

Not to get too off topic here, but I just found this on page four of this very thread: http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.60.html

Apparently I listened to Tosca before and am just as allergic now as I was then! (cf. Tosca thread in the Opera forum).

Also from the early pages (page 5 this time) - do you like Broucek more than Osud say? I find the former quite hard going compared to the other operas which are generally in the "love" category for me.

[Luke]

Not to get too off topic here...

how dare you! Off topic? In this thread?! The very thought of it. Now, let's get straight back to the real reason we're all here - discussing how using an expressionist painting as a desktop might draw adverse comments form workmates....

but I just found this on page four of this very thread: http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.60.html

Apparently I listened to Tosca before and am just as allergic now as I was then! (cf. Tosca thread in the Opera forum).

Also from the early pages (page 5 this time) - do you like Broucek more than Osud say? I find the former quite hard going compared to the other operas which are generally in the "love" category for me.

I love Broucek - it's such a big, expansive, warm-hearted piece. Osud is dense and intense, it packs a huge punch into a relatively short time, but - I suppose this is the crux of it, for me, as a lover of Janacek's music even more than Janacek's sense of drama - I think the music of Broucek is finer, more varied, some of the most fantastical stuff Janacek wrote, and it's more typically Janacekian in voice too, which is always going to hook me.

[Guido]

how dare you! Off topic? In this thread?! The very thought of it. Now, let's get straight back to the real reason we're all here - discussing how using an expressionist painting as a desktop might draw adverse comments form workmates....

I love Broucek - it's such a big, expansive, warm-hearted piece. Osud is dense and intense, it packs a huge punch into a relatively short time, but - I suppose this is the crux of it, for me, as a lover of Janacek's music even more than Janacek's sense of drama - I think the music of Broucek is finer, more varied, some of the most fantastical stuff Janacek wrote, and it's more typically Janacekian in voice too, which is always going to hook me.

Ok I'll give it another go then! Looking at itunes it has been a year since I last heard it, so maybe it's time for a rerun since this for me is "The summer of opera".

[Maciek]

My, weren't we a jolly lot back then!

For a minute there I thought this thread was going to loop. You know, with people starting to say the same things over again, the same things they said back then. Until we reach this point here, and then it would start over.

(Or at least the same things being said, though not necessarily by the same people.)

[Maciek]

BTW, Guido, I thought I'd share my very own thoughts on Broucek with you.

I adore Broucek, but it is in some respects the hardest of the late five to click with, which is to do, I think, with the plot and the comic pace, and the way these impact upon the kaleidoscopic music. Give it a little time if it doesn't take hold at once.

[Luke]

Mucking around in a free half hour, decided I really ought to put something up for Guido, who's been so patient waiting for something cello-ey, and been promised something so often! Here's a piece for cello duet that I wrote in 1999 - a lifetime ago, it seems. My original notes:

Two was commissioned for a wedding anniversary and, as the title suggests, is concerned with appropriate notions of doubleness. The two cellos play a variation o (18th century = 'Double') of a bipartite piece from Couperin's Seizieme Ordre, L'Hymen-Amour; both parts of the piece are in two halves; and the whole is written almost entirely in two voices. In my version the original piece slips in and out of focus like a dream.

The PDF of the score is taken from my handwritten manuscript, so it's too large to upload here - I can email it if anyone wants to see it, because the two images I've posted below are just from screenshots, and even the slightest magnification will make the things illegible! But they give an idea. I played this piece a few times back then, and I remember it sounding rather beautiful. But it's been a long time....

[karlhenning]

Looks lovely, Luke! Would you please send, whenever convenient?

[Guido]

Yes please! Do you have an mp3 of this one? I'll have to try and play it with a friend.

[Luke]

No, last time these got played was before the advent of recorded sound hit Norfolk 

[Luke]

Continuing my theme of unearthing old pieces - here's something I found a while back (along with all those other old scores I wrote about at the time). One of the less prehistoric of my old, juvenile pieces, I suppose - I think I was 18 when I wrote this, possibly in my first term at Cambridge (because later in the manuscript book are counterpoint exercises I did for Stephen Cleobury that term, all my painful faults patiently marked by the great man himself, and first sketches towards a piece which in the end I wrote around October of that term IIRC). I remember enjoying writing this but stopping because it seemed to be going nowhere - it was too easy, I think I felt, I couldn't trust that it was any good! There's a Gavin Bryars influence here, certainly - I was deeply into his grainy soundworld, his throbbing lower-string textures, his poignant harmonies (most typically of fifth superimposed upon fifth, a semitone between the middle two notes* - there are one or two of those here, but not too many). I was obviously at a bit of a loss, but it's nice enough. Cello harmonics at the beginning, Guido - supposed to be both notes (perfectly possible, and in the score I notated how), but Sibelius will only allow one harmonic circle at a time and I couldn't be bothered to find a work-round!

*I suppose that's a minor triad with an added minor sixth, but it's not really - in Bryars the open spacing with the two fifths is an important feature of the sound; I don't use it much in this piece though, as far as I can see, thankfully!

[Luke]

This is the one I was sticking into Sibelius last night, Karl!

[karlhenning]

Fascinating!

And we cross-posted:

This is the one I was sticking into Sibelius last night, Karl!

Aye, so I guessed!

[Luke]

Fascinating!

A word into which many meanings can be read!!! 

[karlhenning]

Hah!  Well, what I was immediately thinking was, that there are aspects to it which might appear in my compositions nowadays (when I've been writing for quite some little while), and which had never occurred to me back in the days when I was studying composition . . . and here they are in this early morceau of your own.  So it's this sort of ghost dialogue between the two of us at different eras which inspired the response fascinating : )